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T O P I C R E V I E W

spaced out

One of the 'holy grails' of the shuttle patches must surely be the STS-51E patch with a Baudry-only tab. Well, I've not found one of those, but I did get one step closer...

As most of you probably know both AB Emblem and Swissartex produced versions of the STS-51E patch which incorporated a Baudry-only tab in a one-piece cut-edge patch.

When Senator Garn was added to the crew a month before the scheduled lift-off these patches needed to be re-made. Both companies went for the option of trimming away the Baudry tab by hand and then attaching a separate Baudry/Garn name tab to the patch body.

Most examples of AB Emblem's resulting patch still show some traces of the original tab where the pale blue border joined the main patch body at the first "D" of Seddon and the "S" of Griggs.

Swissartex apparently decided to try to hide these traces by adding a thick blue merrowed edge around the entire patch body, with a matching border on the sewn-on tab, as shown in the example below.

While I've never seen an example of an original Baudry-only patch, recently I did manage to acquire an example of the Swissartex patch that has not had this merrowed border applied, as shown below.

This allows you to get an idea of the way their STS-51E patch originally looked, complete with the traces of the trimmed-away Baudry-only name tab. It was actually quite a nice version of the patch before the thick blue border was applied.

lunarrv15

About three weeks ago, someone on eBay sold a Baudry decal with the tab.

Kevin T. Randall

Yes, I won it on Wednesday 11th March. It was one of a set of three Challenger mission decals. All three decals were in mint condition. Only one other bidder for this lot.

spaced out

The decals are not that uncommon to be honest, although still nice to have.

Go4Launch

I have a period patch with the Baudry-only tab that Chris mentioned to start this thread, which I believe was made by Swissartex.

spaced out

With John's permission, here is his patch:

It's certainly got an intact Baudry-only tab but I was suprised to see that it had the thick blue border added around the whole thing. Maybe they intended their patch to look that way, but I always thought they added that border to the trimmed body in order to cover the traces of the cut, then added a matching border to the new tab.

Why they would want to add the same border to an intact Baudry-only tab is a mystery. My only suspicion is that perhaps this was done after the Baudry-Garn tab version was released.

At the time of the cancellation of the mission maybe they were left with some un-cut Baudry-only patches as well as the stock they'd already converted into Baudry-Garns.

The only value of either set of patches was as souvenirs of a cancelled mission so perhaps they finished-off any remaining Baudry-only patches with a border to match the Baudry-Garns and then sold them off too.

A second example of this ultra rare Swissartex STS-51E 'Baudry' only patch, identical to the one John Bisney has (see the above image), has been found in amongst a mixed lot of 13 other mainly shuttle patches from various manufacturers, listed on the French eBay website.

This lot of 14 patches had been listed at least three times since mid-December last year, but was only picked up by myself on March 28th.

This lot of 14 patches was with Chris Spain, as he helped me to secure this lot of patches, as the seller did not speak or understand English, and would not ship outside of France.

Kevin T. Randall

The second recorded example of this ultra rare Swissartex STS-51E 'Baudry' only patch has now arrived safely here in the United Kingdom (along with the other 13 mixed mainly shuttle patches).

Here is an image of the back of this one piece patch, and the front of John Bisney's example:

monkeyman 3061

I worked on the program for over 25 years and I found in my collection of space shuttle memories, a Launch Team pin of 51E Bobko, Williams, Seddon, Griggs, Hoffman with flag insignia and Baudry name.

I believe it may be the only design pin (if anyone can give me more history it would greatly be appreciated. I have never seen another one of these ever.

Hart Sastrowardoyo

Had - emphasis on had - a 41F pin with 'launch team' on back. This was when it was just the five NASA astronauts, no PSs.

Kevin T. Randall

I would like to report that two more of these ultra rare Swissartex STS-51E 'Baudry' only patches identical to the two previous ones reported above have come to light this month. They were found in an accumulation of shuttle mission, (some 'crew') and payload patches belonging to a former NASA employee who worked at the Public Affairs Office.

Coincidentally today is the 30th anniversary of the rollout of STS-51E stack to launch pad 39A.

lunarrv15

I was the sole bidder on 10 Baudry tab decal over a year ago or so.

Tom

quote:Originally posted by Kevin T. Randall:Coincidentally today is the 20th anniversary of the rollout of STS-51E stack to launch pad 39A.